Day 7
Maybe it’s Monday or maybe it’s the weather, but today I’m feeling less grateful and more frustrated.
We have a new volunteer, a lovely woman who normally works as a dentist. While gowning up, she told me that she put herself on the volunteer list over six weeks ago, but was never contacted until she called repeatedly to follow up. She has several friends who are still on that list, but have not been called.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard of people - including people with medical, nursing or PAB experience - trying unsuccessfully to volunteer. But when she said this, something broke inside me. Because when we were first deployed, it was on the assumption - or so we thought - that there was truly no one else available to do this work. And it turns out that’s not quite true. There were - are - qualified people ready and willing to help, who could have allowed at least a few of us to stay in our jobs.
Look, I get it. Vetting and organizing volunteers is hard, especially in a crisis. It’s much easier to use people already on the payroll, people who don’t have a choice or a say in where they go. But administrative ease has a cost.
Right now, the cost is being born by my colleagues who are older, who have asthma and other underlying conditions, whose medical certificates have been refused and who never signed up to put themselves at this much risk. And by the parents of young kids who have chosen to isolate from their families and don’t know when they’ll see them again, because our assignments have no timeline. And by all of us whose careers and lives are upside down.
And for what? To be repurposed for roles where we’re neither particularly qualified nor especially useful. PPE policing is a noble calling, but literally anyone can do it. I would know; I’m literally anyone.
Here’s another cost: when we were deployed, we left behind caseloads and waiting lists overflowing with clients whose needs have not evaporated. The day I got the call, I was at the office, unable to see clients in person but busy attending school meetings remotely, calling to check up on families, delivering home programs and working on resources for tele-therapy. I stayed until 6pm that day, trying to manage the most urgent concerns, knowing that the next day my clients would reach only an out-of office voicemail, and for how long? I know I’m not alone in this. One of my fellow workers confided that at the end of his shift he goes home to respond to work emails, because he works with at-risk youth and he’s afraid they’ll have no one else to turn to. “Non-essential” is a subjective term.
Yet we’ll keep coming in. We will cry quietly in our cars and then show up for our shifts, smile under our masks and do whatever needs to be done.
And in the end, that’s the real reason we’ve been called on: because we’re healthcare workers, and this is what we do. We chose our professions because we lack the ability to look suffering in the face and walk the other way.
It’s nice when this quality feels appreciated. It’s less nice when it feels exploited and expendable.
Day 8
We have a new volunteer, a lovely woman who normally works as a dentist. While gowning up, she told me that she put herself on the volunteer list over six weeks ago, but was never contacted until she called repeatedly to follow up. She has several friends who are still on that list, but have not been called.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard of people - including people with medical, nursing or PAB experience - trying unsuccessfully to volunteer. But when she said this, something broke inside me. Because when we were first deployed, it was on the assumption - or so we thought - that there was truly no one else available to do this work. And it turns out that’s not quite true. There were - are - qualified people ready and willing to help, who could have allowed at least a few of us to stay in our jobs.
Look, I get it. Vetting and organizing volunteers is hard, especially in a crisis. It’s much easier to use people already on the payroll, people who don’t have a choice or a say in where they go. But administrative ease has a cost.
Right now, the cost is being born by my colleagues who are older, who have asthma and other underlying conditions, whose medical certificates have been refused and who never signed up to put themselves at this much risk. And by the parents of young kids who have chosen to isolate from their families and don’t know when they’ll see them again, because our assignments have no timeline. And by all of us whose careers and lives are upside down.
And for what? To be repurposed for roles where we’re neither particularly qualified nor especially useful. PPE policing is a noble calling, but literally anyone can do it. I would know; I’m literally anyone.
Here’s another cost: when we were deployed, we left behind caseloads and waiting lists overflowing with clients whose needs have not evaporated. The day I got the call, I was at the office, unable to see clients in person but busy attending school meetings remotely, calling to check up on families, delivering home programs and working on resources for tele-therapy. I stayed until 6pm that day, trying to manage the most urgent concerns, knowing that the next day my clients would reach only an out-of office voicemail, and for how long? I know I’m not alone in this. One of my fellow workers confided that at the end of his shift he goes home to respond to work emails, because he works with at-risk youth and he’s afraid they’ll have no one else to turn to. “Non-essential” is a subjective term.
Yet we’ll keep coming in. We will cry quietly in our cars and then show up for our shifts, smile under our masks and do whatever needs to be done.
And in the end, that’s the real reason we’ve been called on: because we’re healthcare workers, and this is what we do. We chose our professions because we lack the ability to look suffering in the face and walk the other way.
It’s nice when this quality feels appreciated. It’s less nice when it feels exploited and expendable.
Day 8
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